If I had to quote one piece of advice from the community that I heard most often on MMO development, it would be "DON'T DO IT!".

People give reasons like, "You will need server side programming knowledge", or "It takes millions of dollars". I am wondering how accurate these assumptions are.

Many suggest making a single player RPG instead. Is a single player RPG really that much less complicated than an MMO?

Lets say you have plenty of server side programming experience (as well as client side obviously), a team of 20 or so people willing to dedicate a few hours a week to development, and strong leadership. Is it really so impossible?

One thing I am not understanding is where all this money is going to be needed. There are so many open source tools today that software is not an issue. Any decent game that someone wants to make would need volunteer work done. Of course a person interested in creating a game that is not sponsored by a publisher is not going to pay its developers. That leaves what...server cost? Dedicated servers are not that expensive. Surely not millions of dollars. Sure, professional studios spend millions of dollars in game creation because they need it done fast. They need to be able to pay a team of people to allocate 40 hours a week to working on their game. If you want reliable team members, you will have to pay them. For an indie team, where there are no deadlines, and quality is determined by the motivation of the team, is millions of dollars really a prerequisite?

Another thing I seem to be missing out on is the difficulty. Dont get me wrong, I know creating an MMO is a very large challenge for an indie team, but the majority of the community builds it up to be impossible. There are many existing MMO's that have been created by indie teams that are already successful. Eternal Lands and Wurm Online being two of them. Of course these are not MMO's that could compete with professionally funded games, but they are successful in their own right, and have 300+ players online at all times. People HAVE done this. It is NOT impossible.

Lets compare the difficulty of creating a single player RPG to a multiplayer RPG. I would say the work is about double that of creating a single player. Sure, its a very rough estimation on my behalf, but I am an experienced programmer, and I have a good idea of what it takes to produce a product. Saying it is MUCH harder to create an MMO out of the otherwise single player counterpart is an exaggeration if you ask me. No I have never created an MMO before, but this seems like a blind statement. It seems like so many people write off a single player RPG as some simple, one hour game. Lets say you created an MMO, but with no multiplayer aspects. Like an MMO with a one person limit. It wouldnt be multiplayer, but it is built just like one. The bulk of the work still exists. Sure, you have to convert to a client/server architecture, but all of the design, modeling, client programming, and all of that still exists. So what about converting a client based RPG to a client/server multiplayer RPG makes this leap from "Anyone with some time on their hands can do it" to "Dont even try it without a million bucks"?

So is there some hidden aspect to multiplayer RPG software production that I am not seeing, or are single player RPG's just not seen on an epic scale as MMO's are?

Maybe its the tools people are using that make multiplayer aspects of gaming difficult? Maybe its the fact that an MMO would demand a larger world, more detail, and player balance, where as a single player game has the option of scalability?

Seeing other games being produced by other indie companies, I am not so easily discouraged by these nay sayers putting down anyone who would like to attempt MMO development.

So am I wrong, or just overly simplifying the jump from single player RPG to MMO?

If I had to quote one piece of advice from the community that I heard most often on MMO development, it would be "DON'T DO IT!".

That's a pretty sound piece of advice.

Many suggest making a single player RPG instead. Is a single player RPG really that much less complicated than an MMO?

Depends. Maybe it's not complicated if you have years of server knowledge, but you probably don't have millions of dollars.

Lets say you have plenty of server side programming experience (as well as client side obviously), a team of 20 or so people willing to dedicate a few hours a week to development, and strong leadership. Is it really so impossible?

You would need investors, lots of them, preferably crazy ones.

One thing I am not understanding is where all this money is going to be needed. There are so many open source tools today that software is not an issue.

No, software's not an issue at all. With enough knowledge, all software is essentially free.

That leaves what...server cost? Dedicated servers are not that expensive. Surely not millions of dollars.

I have 2 words for you,BRUTE FORCE That is the term I would use to describe this:

It has nothing do do with the programming challenge, it has to do with the sheer amount of power you need to support that many players in one game world. THIS is why you need millions of dollars, it's not a matter of will-power. I guarentee you that the dedicated servers you're thinking of are not nearly powerful enough to run something on an MMO scale.

Other than that, no, there's really not a whole lot of difference for programming. That's why an RPG can be made by one person, and a *real* MMO is next to impossible. Now, what is possible is an Multiplayer Online RPG. It's the "massive" part that so hard.

EDIT: Hey! 500th post happy anniversary!

Sol_HSA
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2008-09-23T13:16:13Z —
#3

Another thing that takes a big chunk of the million dollars is content. Lots of content. Lots and lots of content. More content that you can possibly imagine making by yourself.

edit: So, first make the single-player RPG and be amazed how much content even that requires. Then multiply this by X.

necroside
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2008-09-23T14:23:47Z —
#4

What about publicity, yes you can make some banner exchange and some Forum and massive mail work, but you'll need a lot of publicity. If you want the massive part of users you'll need a lot of publicity in lot of languages. And publicity is not a cheap issue.

Rofar
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2008-09-23T16:03:00Z —
#5

You are absolutely correct. It is not an impossible task as is made out to be by 99.9% of the community. However, there are definate challenges. The biggest challenge is developing enough content.

MMO development is no harder than developing a single player RPG but trying to get your share of the MMO market is extremely more difficult than getting a piece of the RPG market.

jakt
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2008-09-23T19:47:18Z —
#6

Well, lets put something into perspective here...

I am not saying I am trying to create the next WoW or Age of Conan. I am not expecting anywhere near 1,000,000 people playing or creating a game that is large enough to support this kind of player base. Of course it costs a fortune to not only create, but maintain games like this.

However, when you tell someone they are better off making a single player RPG, you probably dont mean it is possible to create a game like Oblivion by yourself either.

I think one point I am trying to make here is that the community creates this huge gap between single player and multiplayer games, when in fact I could create a single player RPG that would be more work than some MMO's. It is not a fact that any multiplayer game is more work automatically. Yes, there are new concepts involved with a multiplayer game, but this does not mean more work is involved.

I am more interested in how much more work is involved in creating an MMO over a single player RPG on the same scale...a scale that is fir for a team of 20 or so indie developers.

dave_
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2008-09-23T21:13:05Z —
#7

It's all an issue of scope. The average poster on a games forum has less than 6 months experience. Attempting to make a game is a difficult challenge. Adding a scalable network service in addition to the game multiplies the complexity.

If you're asking how to make an MMO, you're asking the wrong question!

I'd love to talk about MMO development. I've working in the domain for years. But you need to ask more specific questions.

It's all an issue of scope. The average poster on a games forum has less than 6 months experience. Attempting to make a game is a difficult challenge. Adding a scalable network service in addition to the game multiplies the complexity.

If you're asking how to make an MMO, you're asking the wrong question!

I'd love to talk about MMO development. I've working in the domain for years. But you need to ask more specific questions.

How to make an MMO wasnt even close to the question I was asking. I am not even asking for details on any specific step of the process.

I was merely contrasting the amount of work involved in creating a single player game compared to a MMO on a given scale, and was interested in why the community believes this contrast to be such a large gap.

dave_
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2008-09-23T22:34:52Z —
#9

Your question is still vague. You ask about the work involved in single player vs MMO. The problem is neither of those terms are defined. What is a single player game? What is an MMO?

Making any complicated piece of software is hard. You really have to know what you're aiming to make before you start!

I think one point I am trying to make here is that the community creates this huge gap between single player and multiplayer games,

no we don't... There's TONS of multiplayer games made by indie companies and lone developers. Multiplayer is trivial if you have netwroking and server experience. Getting enough players could cause your game to have a quick death, but it's totally possible to make one.

What's NOT possible to make is a real MMO. And let me explain the difference between multiplayer and MMO. Multiplayer is designed around the core concept of having a few players on a given server set, each set operating independantly of eachother (that means no interaction between players on different severs, at least for the game itself). Massive multiplayer supports thousands to tens of thousands on a single interconnected-multi-million-dollar-super-network and the the game is designed to have this many players at once in order to function properly.

If you go to an indie site boasting an MMO, they're either lying or sadly mistaken, because real indie MMO's are non-existant. In fact the 2 words are almost incompatable. If millions of people know about you, it would be pretty damn hard (and kind of dumb) to remain an indie.

EDIT: btw, when I say real MMO, I mean something vaugley comparable to WoW, not those browser games.

However, when you tell someone they are better off making a single player RPG, you probably dont mean it is possible to create a game like Oblivion by yourself either.

It's unlikley that you would, but its not impossible. Lets weigh the benefits here though. You could spend 10-12 years making an Oblivion killer and perhaps have accomplished one of the biggest feats in gaming history. However, few people are going to know about it, even fewer people are going to buy it when they can go pick up the real oblivion at what is probably a fraction of the cost, and you will have most likley wasted all your spare time in that 10-12 years. Yeah, it's completley possible to do it, but it's just not practical.

Yes, there are new concepts involved with a multiplayer game, but this does not mean more work is involved.

As related to above: In isolated theory you're correct, in practical profit-needing reality... well, try it and tell me what you discover.

fireside
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2008-09-24T04:48:17Z —
#11

You will need all the same skills plus some more to write an mmo compared to a single player rpg, so they are just giving good advice. Most people that try to write a single player rpg don't finish it. These are skills that have to be built up slowly, so when people ask about building a big MMO, people are just trying to give them realistic advice. There are a few indie MMO's, but I doubt that any of them started out saying they were going to build an MMO. They started programming a little 2d game. If you've been programming a 2d game, you pretty much know where you need to go next, so the people that ask this question are just lazy people that want a click together MMO kit or something. There are a few MMO kits, like Torques, that don't look that bad, really. There are also things like Sun's Darkstar that look interesting, but the very best thing to do is pick up a programming book and start with a 2d game, or even better, a text game. The thing here is, if a text game isn't good enough, or a 2d game isn't good enough, you don't even really know what a game is all about. Everything is just an extension of pong. It's like that saying, if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it. Only this is, if you have to ask how to make an MMO, you are incapable of making one.

The problem with the MMO questions is that most people who ask them *are* trying to create the next WoW. Only, it has to be *their* design, and they need other people to implement it for them. For free. See this pattern enough times and you should see where the automatic negative response comes from.

Anyway, here's a great post if you're dead set on going though with a project like this:

if you have to ask how to make an MMO, you are incapable of making one.

That's actually a really good rule to remember.

timothyinspa
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2008-09-24T13:31:03Z —
#14

plus you need customer support, and it will take a lot of human resources why dont you read some books about game business?

Rofar
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2008-09-24T16:06:07Z —
#15

Needing customer support or a server farm capable of hosting 1000s of players has nothing to do with developing an MMO. Thats all on the production side of things and the OPs questions was in regard to development.

Needing customer support or a server farm capable of hosting 1000s of players has nothing to do with developing an MMO. Thats all on the production side of things and the OPs questions was in regard to development.

Soooooo, they would end up with an MMO that couldn't be played as an MMO and therefore probably not played at all... go for it

Needing customer support or a server farm capable of hosting 1000s of players has nothing to do with developing an MMO. Thats all on the production side of things and the OPs questions was in regard to development.

If you are developing a viable MMO, versus a personal project, you'd better plan for the infrastructure (people, servers, etc...) needed to support the whole thing. Why code an MMO up, only to then find out you don't have the resources to run it?

Part of any serious development effort is making sure the "go-live" part can happen.

I was merely contrasting the amount of work involved in creating a single player game compared to a MMO on a given scale, and was interested in why the community believes this contrast to be such a large gap.

There are a multitude of new problems that are quite complex that do not ever come into play with a single-player RPG game.

Major issues off the top of my head, and not complete:

Multiplayer networking is not fun

Related to that, client support becomes much trickier. How will you diagnose, triage and respond?

Major security problems (many MMOs have risen and fallen because of cheating)

Need for systems (both automated and human-level) for policing the game.

the game design needs to be reviewed for more stringent game balance.

as other have said, content explosion.

scalability, availability and robustness in the game's architecture becomes critical (apart from cheating, repeated downtime is another big MMO killer)

Basically, the difference between single-player vs. MMO is the same as going from building Notepad to building a Client/Server Document Versioning repository. It just is a fundamentally more complex beast with more different concerns.

And, if you've never coded up a Notepad, your first attempt at a repository will be full of missteps. Can one do it, though? Sure, as long as you go in knowing you'll chuck out versions 1 AND 2...

But, if you build small and build exp[experience, especially when young, you'll have much more likelihood of success, instead of spending time possibly getting frustrated in versions 1 and 2 of your MMO.

If you are developing a viable MMO, versus a personal project, you'd better plan for the infrastructure (people, servers, etc...) needed to support the whole thing. Why code an MMO up, only to then find out you don't have the resources to run it? Part of any serious development effort is making sure the "go-live" part can happen.

Regardless of how you or anyone else feels regarding this, the fact remains that the question posed in this thread was about "developing" an MMO and not about the production of an MMO. So the answers should be focused on the development challenges.

Regardless of how you or anyone else feels regarding this, the fact remains that the question posed in this thread was about "developing" an MMO and not about the production of an MMO. So the answers should be focused on the development challenges.

You're not getting it. Production *is* part of development. A lot of people would say they're the same thing. Development is impossible to complete without a player base for an MMO, because it has to be tested (about the last %25 of development is testing and debugging/revising).

Yes you can program an MMO, but the point is that you'll have spent years of your life working on something that no one will ever see and no one will be impressed with because it doesn't work.